Secondary Analysis Lab

M Cecil Smith, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, and Lucas Moore,
Director of the
Program Evaluation and Research Center are collaborating to establish the Secondary
Analysis Lab as a resource for CEHS faculty members and graduate students. The
purpose of the Lab is to both encourage and support the utilization and analysis
of a wide variety of education and social sciences data sets to address important
education and social policy questions.

Every year, federal and state agencies gather population-level data on a variety
of children, youth, and adult populations. Examples include the National Household
Education Surveys (National Center for Education Statistics;
https://nces.ed.gov/nhes/), the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Heath
(Add Health; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development (NICHD);
http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth), and the Monitoring the Future Study
(University of Michigan Institute for Social Research;
http://monitoringthefuture.org/).

Many of these data sets are archived and available for education researchers and
social scientists to use but, unfortunately, many such data sets are under-utilized.

A principal advantage of secondary data analysis for the investigator is that relevant
data have already been gathered and are organized for analyses, rendering great
savings in time and money. Although there are some limitations to secondary data
analysis (i.e., not all relevant variables will be captured in a particular data
set), the ease with which studies can be conducted and subsequently published is
particularly advantageous.

The Secondary Analysis Lab will:

assist faculty members to obtain data sets of interest;

provide secure data storage for all data in compliance with data owners’ standards
for data security;

train faculty members and graduate students in secondary data analytic methods;

provide statistical and methodological expertise and consultation to faculty members
and graduate students using secondary data sets for research.

Both
PERC and the
CEHS Research Office also provide limited funding opportunities to support
faculty research employing secondary data sets.